


Loch Song

by SeRose (Sarosia)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Belonging, Gen, Home, Loch Ness, Transformation, lycanthropy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 12:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7573969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarosia/pseuds/SeRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A strange song fills the night of the full moon around Loch Ness that few can hear. But if you can hear, then you can belong. </p><p>*New 2017 version posted in 1st chapter. Original from 2012 is in Ch. 2.*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Loch Song (2017)

*2017 Version*

 

Sunset on the Loch. The colors of the sky reenacting one last battle in the time that remained. They faced off with their own reflections, fighting and then making peace before dying slowly, ushering in the night.

 

It had rained earlier in the day, but now the sky was clear. The smell of it still lingered in the air and the dirt was damp underneath her. Valerie didn't notice the moisture seeping through the bottom of her jeans, though. Why would she care even if she had? This sunset was her whole world right now. Just as it should be.

 

Once it began to fade, Valerie dug her feet into the soft dirt and giggled. Her shoes lay by the tent where she'd tossed them on arrival. The warm tingle of energy spreading over every inch of visible skin made her close her eyes and angle her head so that her face received the full dose.

 

The moon was already breaking through the top of the mountains. Its light warmed her in spite of the cool breeze that blew in from the lake, carrying with it the scent of fresh water.

 

“Well, Miss Connor. Ya aren't still searchin' fer tha' grea' beast, are ya?”

 

Old Ed's voice didn't surprise her. She'd been expecting the old man at some point. Ed had always been very consistent in finding her every year that she came to the Loch from that very first vacation. Every time she thought she'd found a place where she wouldn't be bothered by anyone, there he was shambling along the shore for a quick chat.

 

_He knows_ , she thought. It was paranoid more than anything. A thought someone with a deep, dark secret thinks.

 

But...the night she met him was the first night she heard the Song. It had drifted out from the lake itself as if the water was singing. Notes wrapped themselves around her arms and legs, pulling her into a truth she'd never known about herself. Valerie could hear the Song now, but it wasn't so strong that she couldn't resist. Not yet. Every bit the Moon climbed in the made it a little louder.

 

His eyes smiled at her even though his mouth wasn't so good at it anymore. “Lost?”

 

Valerie's smile turned into a grin and she shook her head. She stood and dusted off her jeans. “Not anymore.”

 

Ed laughed and it was a sound straight from his throat, full and alive and strong. It always made her wish that she'd had someone in her life like this man when she was growing up. An uncle, maybe. Maybe a father. Valerie would have traded her mother for an intelligent, strong, kind man like Ed in half a heartbeat.

 

“Five years, I hope no'. Abou' time ya find a home.”

 

With the moon rising higher, the tingle evolved into a gentle burn over her face and neck. Valerie stared out over the lake with its alternate moon shimmering above the mirrored mountains. “Maybe I will, Ed.”

 

“Ya be careful ou' here. Ne'er know what'll happen.” Ed gave her back a gentle pat and there it was again. The feeling that he knew everything that went on out here. His hand had landed exactly where the mark was under her clothes. When she made eye contact with him, his eyes jerked to the lake. Valerie knew it was the most confirmation she would get.

 

Even though he apparently knew more than she'd ever thought, Valerie still waited until she was completely alone on the bank. Her shirt came over her head and went flying at the scrawny tent. The moonlight burned over everything she revealed. The scar on her back burned even hotter than the rest and she knew it wouldn't be long.

 

Valerie quickly shed the rest of her clothes and grabbed a heavy bag of supplies. She heaved the bag down and into the water as the change began to itch over her back. With the help of the water, the bag came a little farther into the lake before she abandoned it to dive into the cool water. Submerged, the change flowed smooth and fast. It took over, changing her into something more at home here.

 

It barely even hurt anymore.

 

Valerie curved back to the surface and hooked one strap of the once too large sack around her elongated neck. It came along easily behind her. No strain at all. As Valerie glided through the cold water, the old fear came back.

 

Being human, the water stretching out as far as her blurred vision could make out.

 

Sharks and other monsters suddenly appearing without warning before fading away. Her imagination taking full control with nothing else to see but darkness.

 

Gasping when it became too much. Drinking in the water around her. Searching for escape. Searching for air.

 

It was gone as fast as it started. She was safe in this lake, her size rivaling anything other than her own kind. The Song drifted through the water around her. One long neck after another left the water that night. One second Valerie was staring at things that obviously shouldn't exist anymore and the next they were people. People who knew about the Song.

 

Then came the blow that knocked her out.

 

Now, she followed that tune like a beacon through the water to the opening. There was another guarding it as she neared. He bowed his head to her. The entrance to the caverns was larger than her because she was on the small end of their sizes. Valerie swam through a long tunnel that opened into the nearest of the massive caves.

 

Her head broke through the surface and she gulped in the much needed air. Having lungs instead of gills was a pain, but she would survive. Valerie added her voice to the Song bouncing off the walls. A man and a woman greeted her at the bank.

 

The man took the strap and dragged the bag away as her body changed again. The air underground was freezing cold and she gratefully accepted the long blanket the woman wrapped around her.

 

“Back again, are ya?”

 

Valerie couldn't help smiling at the sound of Sean's voice. He was a Shoche male about her age. In Shochen fashion, he pulled her into a tight hug when he was close enough. They were always touching and hugging. Valerie was naked beneath the blanket, but she was still more comfortable here than anywhere. Sometimes it shocked her how quickly she'd adapted to all of this.

 

Valerie laughed into the embrace. “I probably wouldn't have been back if you'd just let me go that first time. But you just had to involve me.”

 

“Ya were hearin' the Song before he hit ya and ya know it.” An old man with a thick gray beard stepped up to them and Valerie hugged him as well. “Unfortunate that ya were not born with the rest o' the clan.”

 

Valerie patted his arms when they parted. “You have no idea how much I wish I had been, King Ronan. Now that I know the joys of the Loch.”

 

“Spoken like a true Shochen.” The king smiled and bared his worn down teeth. He looked at Sean and leaned in close to Valerie. “Ya know, my son has less and less time to look for a mate.”

 

Sean's face turned several shades before settling on a red bright as his hair. Valerie would have laughed, but her own face went hot.

 

“Da,” he said, pleading even thought it wouldn't do any good and they all knew it.

 

“Nonsense, my end is gettin' closer and I would like to know my people are being cared for by both incarnations of the Gods. Duality ensures happiness, Sean.”

 

Valerie had to find something else to look at and her eyes ended up on the edge where the stone met the dark water.

 

Valerie woke up with one word in her head. The word repeated over and over until she was awake enough to understand.

 

Run.

 

She was alone on a hard bed in a house made of stone. Valerie ran. She didn't stop until she hit the edge of the water. There wasn't anywhere else to go. If she had been a different person, then she might have dove into that dark water to get away. Her odds were closer to drowning, though, so she had to stop.

 

Valerie turned to face the people that had chased her from the stone city. She dropped her head in defeat and realized that she wasn't wearing a shirt. Valerie covered her chest and only now did she feel the burning cuts in her back. What the hell had they done to her? What were they going to do?

 

The guy who called himself 'Sean' tried to explain, but it was insane. Impossible. And then the woman stripped out of her clothes. She stepped beneath a silver beam of light that fell through a circular hole in the cavern. She turned her back to Valerie and stood with arms outstretched.

 

Thick scars made a shape in the curve of her back. It was something with fins and a long neck that Valerie recognized even before the woman's body began to change. Her skin turned grey-green first and then her body began to change as if shaped by some invisible artist's hand.

 

She flopped into the pool and when she reappeared, it was with the head and neck of something that was supposed to be extinct. The Song poured from her open mouth, making Valerie's head swim.

 

Valerie touched her own back and felt the cuts. They were wet and her fingers were smeared with fresh blood when she pulled her hand back. Valerie swayed on her feet before dropping to the stone.

 

“Still in there?”

 

Valerie nodded, raising her head to look at Sean. “Present and accounted for.”

 

Sean had the brightest smile Valerie had ever seen. It faded when he became aware of it, ducking his head uncomfortably. He glanced at the pool behind her. “Father's changin' now ta lead the pod into the Loch. Ya were driftin', but he wanted ta know if ya made yer decision. Yeh've had five years...are ya goin' ta stay with the clan?”

 

Valerie tried to come up with one reason, but she couldn't. Her obsession with the Song had taken away all of them. Her fiancee accused her of being distant. Her boss had found her distracted. Her mother had passed two years ago. Nothing and no one was going to keep her from staying here.

 

The Song began again from the pool and Valerie looked to find two large green eyes staring at her from the inhuman face she knew belonged to King Ronan. The sound sent a chill over her that wasn't from the cool, underground air. She shivered and Sean touched her arm through the blanket she huddled under.

 

“If it helps any...I'd like it if yeh'd stay.” His eyes were the same green as the rest of the clan. It wasn't just the mark that helped them revert to their ancient forms. The blood flowing in their veins – in hers, too – belonged to something older than humanity. Something that adapted to survive no matter what came.

 

Valerie smiled and moved closer to him. She wrapped the blanket around him, too, so that her naked body pressed against his clothed one. Sean smelled like water and fish and this cave they were in, a world apart from the one she'd been born into. More than anyone in her life, he felt like home.

 

Valerie nodded. “I am Shochen.”

 

The volume of the Song grew as more of the clan changed. Valerie rose onto her toes to kiss Sean. His hands slid around behind her under the blanket, pulling her closer. He moved them back under the light of the Moon Well.

 

Valerie helped him strip out of his clothes. She dropped the blanket and slid her fingers over the rough scars on his back. They were so much older than the ones on her own. Fire burned over their skin as the shift began. The others had left and together, they slid into the pool. Valerie entered the tunnel first, knowing he was close behind.

 

For the rest of the night, the loch was their playground. The air rang with the Song coming from over a hundred voices to tempt anyone who hear it.

 

Ed stood in the door of his little home. There were three nights of the full moon when the Song would come the loudest and usually they ran in different shifts, a smaller number coming out each night. They were so loud tonight that he could almost feel the sound coming through the air. Loch must be full of them tonight.

 

Ed smiled and headed inside.

 

 


	2. Loch Song (2012)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The original story as I wrote it in 2012.

*2012 Version*

 

Of all moments in the day, the young woman on the bank thought this to be the most beautiful. Sunset on the Loch. The colors of the sky reenacting one last battle of the day. They faced off with their own reflections, fighting and then making peace before dying slowly, ushering in the night.

 

It had rained earlier in the day, but now the sky was clear. Lingering still were the smell in the air and the dampness of the dirt underneath her. But Valerie was so entranced by the sunset display that she did not even notice the moisture seeping through the bottom of her jeans. She dug her bare feet into the soft dirt and giggled. The moon was already breaking through the top of the mountains and she could feel the warm tingle of its energy over her visible skin. A cool breeze blew in from the lake, bathing her in the relaxing scent of fresh water.

 

“Well, Miss Connor. Ya aren't still searchin' fer Nessie, are ya?”

 

Valerie had been expecting the old man and she raised her eyes from the lake to his shambling form. Edward had been a consistent staple of her annual trips to Loch Ness from the very first vacation. He'd somehow found her tent at a place where she thought she wouldn't be bothered. He had probably a good thirty years on her and he was good company for the short time that he spent with her on the bank. His eyes smiled at her even though his mouth had difficulty living up to emotions.

 

That night had also been the first that she'd been privy to the Song. It had drifted out from the lake itself as if sung by the very waters. That mysterious song was present now, as it had been for the five years that she had been coming here. It was dim, but real, growing louder as the moon slowly began its ascent.

 

Valerie nodded her response to the old man. “It just keeps calling me back.”

 

Ed laughed and it was a full throated thing, alive and strong. It always made her wish that she'd had a relative like this man when she was growing up. An uncle, maybe, or even a father. Valerie would have traded her oft disappearing Mother for an intelligent, strong, kind man like Ed.

 

“Five years, maybe it's time ta find a home.” Ed said in his thick, Scottish brogue.

 

With the moon rising, the tingle she'd felt before evolved into a gentle burn over her face and neck, the only areas exposed to the night air. Ed was not the first to propose the move and Valerie was sure that before the night was over, he would not be the last.

 

Valerie stared out over the lake with its alternate moon shimmering above the mirrored mountains. “Maybe I will, Ed. Maybe I will.”

 

“Yeh be careful out here. Ya never know what'll happen.” Ed patted Valerie's back gently and there was something in the positioning of his hand in the curve that gave her the feeling he knew more than she had previously thought. His hand landed exactly where the mark was under her clothes and a following twitch of his eyes to the lake clarified that he did somehow know. The young woman smiled and nodded.

 

Valerie waited until she was sure that Ed was gone before slipping her light blue jacket down her arms. She tossed it into the scrawny tent and gave one obligatory look around to make sure that she was indeed completely alone on the bank. Her shirt came over her head and went the way of the jacket.

 

The moonlight burned over her back and the scars on it in a silver bath. Valerie quickly shed the rest of her clothes and grabbed a large, heavy bag of supplies. She heaved the bag down and into the water as change began to itch over her back. With the help of the water, the bag came a little farther into the lake before she abandoned it to dive into the cool water. Once submerged, the change flowed smooth and fast, taking over with minimal ache from times past.

 

Valerie curved back to the surface and hooked one strap of the once too large sack around her elongated neck. It came along easily behind her, adding no strain at all. As Valerie glided through the cold water, a half-forgotten fear came to her.

 

_Being human, the water stretching out as far as her blurred vision could make out._

 

_Visions of sharks and other monsters suddenly appearing without warning, sending her heart into a pace so quick, she thought it to burst._

 

_Gasping, drinking in the water around her in search for an escape. In search of air that could not be found._

 

As soon as the old fear surfaced, it was gone, replaced with the secure knowledge that she was safe in this lake, her size rivaling anything other than her own kind. The waters around her echoed with the Song, making her remember the sight of one long neck after another leaving the water and shifting from prehistoric creatures of myth to familiar form. Valerie had went to them, asking of the Song as if in a dream.

 

Now, she followed the tune like a beacon through the water to the opening. There was another large creature like herself guarding it and as she neared, he bowed his strange head to her. The entrance to the caverns was large to give room to any others that had more size to them. Valerie swam through a long tunnel that opened into one of the massive caves.

 

Her head broke through the surface and Valerie gasped for much needed air. Having lungs instead of gills was a difficulty, but not too hard to overcome. The song bounced around in the underground cave and Valerie opened her mouth to add her own special voice to it. She swam up to the bank, where she was greeted by a man and a woman.

 

The man took the strap and began dragging it away as she began changing back. The air in the cave was cold and Valerie gratefully accepted the long blanket that the woman offered.

 

“Back again, are ya?” Sean was a Shoche male about Valerie's age. He walked up to her and when he got close enough, he pulled her into a tight hug.

 

Valerie laughed into the embrace. “I probably wouldn't have been back if you'd just let me go that first time. But you had to involve me.”

 

“Hearing the Song means you belong here. With us.” An old man with a thick gray beard stepped up to them and Valerie hugged him as well. “It's unfortunate that you were not born with the rest of the clan.”

 

Valerie patted his arms when they parted. “You have no idea how much I wish I had been, King Shochen. Now that I know the joys of the Loch.”

 

King Shochen smiled and bared his worn down teeth. “Spoken like a true Shochen.” He looked at Sean and leaned in close to Valerie. “You know, my Son has less and less time to look for a bride.”

 

Valerie watched Sean's face turn several shades before settling on red, bright as a tomato. But she felt her own face heat, also, against wish.

 

“Father,” he said, pleadingly.

 

“Nonsense, I'm getting closer to the end and I would like to know that the Shochen are being cared for by both incarnations of the Gods. Duality ensures happiness, Sean.”

 

Valerie dropped her eyes to the stone floor at the edge that she'd almost fallen that first time.

 

~_~_~

 

Upon waking, then, Valerie's mind had held only one word, repeated over and over until muddled conscious could make sense.

 

_Flee._

 

She had woken alone on a hard bed in what appeared to be a house made of solid rock. Like a frightened animal who'd ventured into a predator's territory, Valerie ran. She ran away from the stone city that surrounded her, but she had to stop before she fell into the pool that closed off the only exit she saw. If Valerie had been a different person, she just might have dove into that dark water and tried her luck at escape from her captors. But, her odds were closer to drowning, so she stumbled to a halt before the very edge that she stood at, now.

 

Valerie turned to face her pursuers, led by Sean. She let her head fall in defeat and she saw that she was not wearing a shirt, a fact that she'd missed in her run. Valerie covered her chest with her arms and waited. The skin of her lower back burned and she wondered what they could have done to her. What they were going to do.

 

Sean tried to explain, but it was all so ludicrous. Impossible. But then one of the girls suddenly stripped out of her clothes in front of everyone and stepped beneath a silver beam of light that fell through circular break in the top of the cavern. She turned her back on Valerie and stood with arms outstretched.

 

Thick scars formed the outline of a finned creature with a long neck in the lower curve of her back. Her skin turned gray-green and then her body began molding like clay under an artist's hand. The girl flopped into the pool behind Valerie and when she reappeared, it was the head and neck of a creature rumored to be extinct. Her mouth opened into the Song and Valerie's head grew light with the sound.

 

She reached around to touch her stinging lower back and there was a small stab of pain as her hand pressed to one of the cuts. It was wet and when she pulled her hand back, her fingers were smeared with fresh blood. Valerie swayed on her feet before falling forward.

 

~_~_~

 

“Still in there?” Sean asked and Valerie nodded, raising her head to look at him.

 

“Present and accounted for.”

 

Sean smiled and it was so bright that Valerie had to drop her eyes. “Father's changing now to lead the pod into the Loch. While ya were driftin', he wanted to know if yeh'd made a decision yet about stayin' with the Clan.”

 

Valerie searched her mind for a reason not to, but all of them had been destroyed. By her fiancee, by her boss, by the death of anyone and everyone she could have called blood. The song began again from the pool and Valerie looked to find two large green eyes staring at her from an almost alien face. The Song sent a chill over her that was not from the cold, underground air. Valerie shivered and Sean touched her arm through the blanket she huddled under, bringing her attention back to him.

 

“If it helps any, I want you to stay.” His eyes were the same green as the rest of the clan, an effect of the Shoche blood flowing in their veins from the mark. And now within her own.

 

Valerie smiled and moved closer to Sean. She opened the blanket and wrapped it around him, enveloping them both. Her naked body pressed against his clothed one and she nodded.

 

“I am Shochen.” She said and the Song grew louder as more of the clan had changed.

 

Valerie rose onto her toes and kissed Sean. Electric heat flowed through her body and he slipped his hands around to her back under the blanket, pulling her tighter to himself. Sean moved them both back and when they were under the Moon Well, he slipped out of his clothing. Valerie dropped the blanket and reached around to touch the rough scars on his back, much older than the ones on her own. Fire burned over their skin as the shift began. The others had left and they slipped into the pool. Valerie entered the tunnel first, knowing he was close behind.

 

For the rest of the night, the lake was a playground for creatures that should not exist. And the air rang with the smooth Song of the Loch.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I would love to hear what you think, so comments are much appreciated as are Kudos.


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